n3wjack's spurts of the mind and other geeky ramblings

dour 2004

Went to the dour festival a few days ago, which is definitely the best alternative music festivals in Belgium, and maybe even in the surrounding countries.
You get a taste of every kind of music there, and the prices are really democratic compared to other festivals. When it comes down to food and drinks, it’s not only reasonably priced, but also there’s plenty of good things to choose from, so not just pizza, fries, hamburgers, beer, cola & water…

One little point of critique perhaps, and something that could be improved on in the next year(s) is to make sure there are free toilet arrangements, at least for the guys. It’s even better, and more honest, if it’s free for guys and galls, but seriously, charging the guys for a piss while they only need something to whiz against is a bit lame. Besides, if it ain’t free it wont take long before they find something else to dump their excess liquids against, like a fence, a tree, etc….

I know, it doesn’t cost much, and the main motivation is that they (we?) are too lazy to walk the extra few metres to reach those toilets… but still, it’s a fact that it happens, and scattering a few of those plastic pyramid urinals can seriously reduce the problem. And yeah, after a few sunny days, it really becomes a problem…

But still, Dour is a great festival. The lineup is always interesting, with lots of (to me) unknown bands and artists to discover. Stuff like Bogdan Raczynski for instance. Squarepushereske jungle mashup beats mixed with gabber hardcore at some points… sweeeeeeet. Donna Summer was pretty phat as well, though I had no idea what he was actually doing with that computer of his… it looked pretty much like he only pressed the play button and let it rip and act like a nutter on stage. Cool stuff though.

A Belgian artists that managed to surprise me was Stijn that same evening. I didn’t expect much of it cause I saw an interview on TV where he was talking about a song he did with another Belgian artist which included a guitar (blegh) so I expected it to be some rocker with some electro influences oslt, which isn’t really my kind of thing.
But it wasn’t. Hell no. It was all electro baby, phat oldskool booming 808 beats, some square synth sounds and vocoded vocals… sweeet.
Nothing new about the music itself, pretty standard electro stuff, but the guy knows how to blend the whole thing into a show, and make it interesting too watch.
Fuck, it doesn’t always need to be extremely chopped up breaks now does it. If it works it works, no matter how “simple” it is.

There where too much good things to mention in detail though, and a lot of things that are already forgotten because they just didn’t cut it enough to stand out in a 4 day musical bath, but some more I find worth mentioning was the crazy gabber set by Overnoise and Noisebuilder (live), Creature with the Atombrain (rock, not my kind of thing normally, but I liked this) and of course Die and Krust who made up for a disappointing drum’n’bass night earlier with Fresh & Pendulum.

Oh, and if you’re on a festival where Air on Maiden is playing, but you’re not into that kind of thing, go see em anyway… they cracked me up!